


Smoke and Bones

by allcanadiangirl (andchimeras)



Category: Everwood, Smallville, Sports Night
Genre: Body Image, Challenge Response, Challenge: The Bordello, Drugs, F/F, Gen, Guilt, M/M, POV Minor Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-06-02
Updated: 2002-06-02
Packaged: 2017-10-09 16:22:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andchimeras/pseuds/allcanadiangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Days like these you've got to find it in some other way: it's all or nothing, baby." Three unrelated ficlets in response to The Bordello's "three fandoms/one lyric" challenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Bones

**Author's Note:**

> Lyric from the song "Avalanche" by Matthew Good. Ficlet titles from the album Avalanche by Matthew Good, ha.

_Everwood:_ **While We Were Hunting Rabbits**

Colin says smoking pot is totally different from drinking. "For one thing, you don't get a hangover."

Bright's not sure. He's worried about the smell. Even though they're out in the logging roads in the fort they built six years ago, half an hour from town. He's wearing his letter jacket, it's new, he doesn't want it stunk up already.

"Dude. Come on."

Eyebrows raised, Colin holds the joint up, thin, tightly rolled. Colin won't say where he got it, just that it was easier to procure than his dad's extra bottle of Crown Royale. "So we'll smoke up tonight instead of drinking. Whatever, right?"

And Bright wants some kind of warmth after today, a cold day of rugby and being pressed way too close to way too many guys. So he takes his lighter from his jacket pocket. Colin reaches for it. Bright says, "No way, Col. It's one of those child-safe ones."

Colin smiles. "I can never work those."

"Duh. I know. You almost set my house on fire last time."

He holds it in his hand, the lighter, it looks small with his fingers wrapped around it, pressing into the safety catch. Quick pressure of his thumb, the flame reflects wetly in Colin's eyes as he leans toward it, joint between his lips, fingers around it like a cigarette.

And Colin's cheeks hollow, skin oddly golden orange, his eyes close. A small twist of smoke, the scent of burning paper and then. Something pungent and, well. Bright wrinkles his nose. Kind of skanky.

The flame cuts out with a tiny sputter, Colin exhales. He doesn't cough or anything, which is weird, because in the movies people always cough like hell the first time. The way Colin's face relaxes, he leans back into the old couch cushions piled against the wall. Bright thinks maybe it isn't his first time, and he's confused.

Colin doesn't open his eyes as he reaches his arm toward Bright, the joint glowing richly, the smell filling the fort, replacing the warm musty scent of old wood and the thick forest outside. Probably leaking out the gaping boards. Around the rusty corrugated tin roof.

The joint is warm when he takes it. It's on fire, moron, he tells himself. And Colin's fingers are warm when he brushes them.

Tastes like paper, but he hasn't taken a breath yet, so. Tastes like. Smoke. And burning things.

And Bright coughs the smoke out until he's hoarse, Colin laughing.

"Jesus, Dull."

When Bright sits up again, Colin has the joint between his smiling lips. He blows a stream of smoke up to the ceiling. "Want to try that again?" he asks.

Bright knows it's not a challenge. It's an invitation. He nods. His throat hurts.

Colin tells him to come closer, to sit beside him. Colin says, "Close your eyes." And Bright does. "Open your mouth." And Bright does.

He hears Colin take a deep breath. And a moment later he feels Colin's hand on his shoulder, the weight as Colin leans toward him.

And the soft drift of smoke blown gently into his mouth. And Colin tells him to breathe.

And he does.

And it's much better than getting drunk.

 

_Smallville:_ **Song for the Girl**

She touches the little knobby bone on the side of her wrist. Presses down on it, pushes the skin around it. Bone, she thinks, and she looks at her reflection as she moves herself. Her skin, at least, and these bones, at least.

And there is Lana. In the mirror, smiling at her. But no. She can feel the muscles moving, knows the lips and teeth are not, knows like she knows she can never be.

It's enough though, for now.

She touches the bone on Lana's wrist, sees how it is more pronounced than that other body, no. Other. Other reflection. Her other reflection is not as thin as Lana. She circles Lana's fingers around Lana's wrist, knows that the other reflection could put her whole hand around it. Lana must stretch her fingers to reach. The other reflection is taller, and. Just. Larger. More.

Less. So much less. So much less she can fit inside Lana, all of her, not even packed that tightly. So much less.

She unbuttons Lana's sweater, lets it fall on the floor because this is reverential passion, it will be slow but it will be unconcerned with messes. She moves her fingers, Lana's thin thin fingers, over Lana's collarbone, down to the catch of her bra.

She is. She is watching. She is watching Lana undress for her. There. On the other side of this pane of glass. Lana on the other side of the glass, of the window.

Remember watching Lana hurriedly tear her school clothes off and dress for work. Remember that. Remember the tired drag of Lana's legs stepping out of her khakis, underwear, slipping an enormous t-shirt on, not even taking her socks off before falling out of sight. Into bed.

How she wanted. Wanted to climb through the window and see Lana smile, see her open her weary eyes, her mouth like an impatien and so red. Open her arms. Like that. Like she is doing now.

This is not the time, though. The time will come, she will step into Lana's arms and all will be forgiven, they will be. They will be. Oh. Together.

Lana knows. Lana looks down and knows what to do. What she wants. This will have to do.

Lana moves her hands slowly down her stomach, twitches them just under the elastic of her panties. Slides her hands in, until her fingertips peek on her thighs. Smooth, smooth, light and. Her skin will taste like sweetened cream. Lana pushes her panties down, and covers herself with one hand, petting the thick coarse curls, tugging just a little, thumb skating the cotton down her thighs until the panties drop to the floor.

Unneeded. There should be no barriers. There should be. Nothing. Impeding her, keeping her from moving entirely into her, from being inside her. Being. Existing inside.

A brighter package.

Herself. She will be made. Lighter, thinner. Face made delicate, hair made smooth. She will be less and so much more. And Lana will surround her, all. All around her. Always. And Lana will never want her to leave, will want her inside forever.

Lana opens herself, slides her fingers through slick beating redness. She slides wet fingers over her breasts, grasps one and squeezes. Lana knows this is what she will do and she wants to prepare herself.

She touches a damp finger, only damp now, and she can smell it, she touches a damp finger to her lips but does not taste. It will not. It will not be Lana and she can't.

She can't.

She falls back on the narrow, hard bed. She pushes her hands roughly between her thighs and rocks herself up, promising Lana she will take more care next time. Will be more gentle with her fragile bones, her birdlike wrists.

She cries out, she yelps a little, she makes a keening sound and the liquid seeps through Lana.

Washes Lana away, and when she sits up, time for art therapy, stomach still shuddering, the other reflection fills the mirror. Enormous and ugly.

Desperate to be shed.

 

_Sports Night:_ **Near Fantastica**

"You feel disconnected from people around you now."

Disconnected, he thinks, is a mild word.

It's more like. Objectivism. Standing totally separate: he's on the other side of the glass. He's watching, because he's grown tired of that. The emotionalism, he's sick and tired of being the guy who gets upset, the guy who gets hurt. He's fucking tired of being the guy who makes the gestures.

He parks his car by the gate. The field is silent but for the crunch of gravel under his sneakers. The highway is far away, the road is empty. Just you, Danny, just you and your bones.

It's a five minute walk from the parking lot. Eventually everything is silent, he's stepped onto the grass as the path ran out. And there it is.

He lays down in the grass and lights a cigarette. The sky is pititlessly blue, the sun is hard and daffodil yellow and he's sweating in his jeans and sweatshirt. The stones in his back pocket dig into his skin, he hopes they'll leave bruises like he's leaving them here. It gives him a vicious kind of pleasure, to know that once Casey would have seen them, would have asked. But now he won't.

Because Dan is strong now. He is apart, he can see everything, and he has become a believer in self-preservation. At all costs.

He's a believer in the power of anger. It's scary, with a kind of wild-eyed freedom wrapped around it. This lack of caring, the ability to. To just let fly. Yell. Be silent. Glare or walk away, throw things. He likes the way people look at him now.

He's nobody's rock. He stretches a hand back, touches the headstone. He is his own man. And that makes him smile as he flicks ashes away.

He hasn't smoked in probably five years. Probably since Dallas. But today. Today seemed to warrant stopping at a gas station in Bramford, grabbing a pack of Players. Not his brand. The taste is unfamiliar, light, mostly less than satisfying. No. Not his.

The smoke hovers in the still air, screens the harsh sky, dulls the sun.

Kill, he thinks, kill before you are killed. And the cigarette is done, he throws the half-singed filter as hard as he can. Feels the snap of his shoulder, the follow-through in his elbow.

Useless. His body. It will sink into the ground eventually, gravity, right here, right beside. Grass will grow over and everything will be broken down. And then bones. After a time the only thing left will be bones. Which will not even last that long. They will become dust.

But now, under. There is no dust. It hasn't been long enough.

He digs his fingers past the grass, into the dirt. Of penance, of. He laughs. Of punishment, and justice.

There isn't any, really. Only, think of it, only ego, and exposure, and enmity. Only hollow achievements of the self. The jump and the landing, the dust fine like smoke in the air and the measurement.

Failure, in the event. Destruction. Deconstruction.

Dismantling.

And it can't go far enough, he thinks. Taking everything apart, breaking all the ties and the obligations. He doesn't need this. He doesn't need the dependence on ceremony, tradition, what has always been, Danny—don't fuck with the system, don't mess with what works.

It doesn't work. Damn, damn, it doesn't work.

If it had. It never did, and it doesn't matter what if it had.

He has handfuls of earth and he's clutching, the coolness against the heat of his life, the burning on his face. The sun, the sun, the smoke has cleared and there is the sun as he sinks.

It has been far too long, he thinks.

Sits up, doesn't replace his divots. Stands slowly, wiping his hands on his jeans. Surveying the acres of bones, of dust, of death. This is the future, he thinks, and I'm fucking okay with that. The thought of them—the ones he used to believe in the love of—he used to think about them. Dying, sometimes. And it used to hurt.

It doesn't anymore. The thought of cold flesh and rotting and bones in the casket and dust. It doesn't hurt anymore. He'll be fine. Because none of it means anything. It means nothing at all. He doesn't care. Detached. Detached is a better word.

He doesn't even turn around. He doesn't look at the stone, at the name, at the dates that he refuses to care about now. Today and that day in August. The rocks drop to the grass. He just says. He just says

"I'm done, Sam."

Mourner's kaddish.

 

End.


End file.
